erect.-AUBREY, JOHN, 1669-96, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, vol. 1, pp. 347, 348, 349. He fell sick about the middle of October last. His disease was the strangury, and the physitians judged it incurable by reason of his great age and naturall decay. About the 20th of November, my Lord being to remove from Chatsworth to Hardwick, Mr. Hobbes would not be left behind; and therefore with a fether bed laid into the coach, upon which he lay warme clade, he was conveyed safely, and was in appearance as well after that little journey as before it. But seven or eight days after, his whole right side was taken with the dead palsy, and at the same time he was made speechlesse. He lived after this seven days, taking very little nourishment, slept well, and by intervalls endeavoured to speake, but could not. In the whole time of his sicknesse he was free from fever. He seemed therefore to dye rather for want of the fuell of life (which was spent in him) and meer weaknesse and decay, then by the power of his disease, which was thought to be onely an effect of his age and weaknesse. He was born the 5th of Aprill, in the year 1588, and died the 4th of December, 1679. He was put into a wollen shroud and coffin, which was covered with a white sheet, and upon that a black herse cloth, and so carryed upon men's shoulders, a little mile to church. The company, consisting of the family and neighbours that came to his funerall, and attended him to his grave, were very handsomely entertained with wine, burned and raw, cake, biscuit, etc.

He was buried in the parish church of Hault Hucknall, close adjoining to the raile of the monument of the grandmother of the present earle of Devonshire, with the service of the Church of England by the minister of the parish. It is intended to cover his grave with a stone of black marble as soon as it can be got ready, with a plain inscription of his name, the place of his birth, and the time of that and of his death.-WHELDON, JAMES, 1679, Letter to John Aubrey, Jan. 16, Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. Clark, vol. 1, p. 382.

I have cursorily looked over Mr. Hobbs his life in Latine which I beleeve will be a very vendible booke both here and beyond sea, for ther is noe lover of learning but will have the curiosity to be particularly informed of the life of soe eminent

a person. a person. And truly the reading of it wase very satisfactory to me, for in my apprehension it is very well writ, but I cou'd have wish'd the author had more dilated upon some particulars; and because you intimate a designe to publish it in English I shall hint to you that the author of the life in Latine hath either not taken notice of at all, or too slightingly, some things very remarkeable, relating to the temper of Mr. Hobbs his mind or to the infirmity of his body, as his extraordinary timorusness which he himself in his Latine poem doth very ingeniously confess and attributes it to the influence of his mother's dread of the Spanish invasion in 88, she being then with child of him. And I have been informed, I think by yourself, that Mr. Hobbs wase for severall yeares before he died soe paralyticall that he was scarce able to write his name, and that in the absence of his amenuensis not being able to write anything he made scrawls on a piece of paper to remind him of the conceptions of his mind he design'd to have committed to writing. But the author of his life in Latine only sa(i)th that about 60 yearse of age he wase taken with a trembling in his hands, the forerunner of the palsy; which in my apprehension deserves to be enlarg'd upon, for it is very prodigious that neither the timorousness of his nature from his infancy, nor the decay of his vital heat in the extremity of old age, accompagnied with the palsy to that violence, should not have chill'd the briske fervour and vigour of his mind, which did wonderfully continue to him to his last.-HATTON, HON. CHARLES, C 1681-2, Letter to William Crooke, Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. Clark, vol. I, p. 390.

Mr. Joyner says that Mr. Hobbs used to say, that Mr. Selden understood nothing of mathematicks; which Mr. Selden being informed of, he replyed, that if Mr. Hobbs understood no more mathematicks than he did law, he understood nothing at all of them. And indeed Mr. Selden had such a mean opinion of that Malmsbury philosopher, that he used to say, All comers were welcome to his table, but Tho. Hobbes and one Rossingham.-HEARNE, THOMAS, 1705, Reliquiæ Hearnianæ, ed. Bliss, Nov. 17, vol. 1, p. 58.

Hobbs seems not to have been very amiable in his life; he was certainly

incapable of true friendship, for the same cowardice, or false principle, which could instigate him to abandon truth, would likewise teach him to sacrifice his friend to his own safety. When young, he was voluptuous, when old, peevish, destitute alike of resolution and honour. However high his powers, his character is mean, he flattered the prevailing follies, he gave up virtue to fashion, and if he can be produced as a miracle of learning, he can never be ranked with those venerable names, who have added virtue to erudition, and honour to genius; who have illuminated the world by their knowledge, and reformed it by example.-CIBBER, THEOPHILUS, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. II, p.

215.

His greatest imperfection was a monstrous egotism-the fate of those who concentrate all their observations in their own individual feelings. There are minds which may think too much, by conversing too little with books and men. Hobbes exulted he had read little; he had not more than half-a-dozen books about him; hence he always saw things in his own way, and doubtless this was the cause of his mania for disputation. . . . His little qualities were the errors of his own selfish philosophy; his great ones were those of nature. He was a votary to his studies he avoided marriage, to which he was inclined; and refused place and wealth, which he might have enjoyed, for literary leisure. He treated with philosophic pleasantry his real contempt of money. His health and his studies were the sole objects of his thoughts; and notwithstanding that panic which so often. disturbed them, he wrote and published beyond his ninetieth year. He closes the metrical history of his life with more dignity than he did his life itself; for his mind seems always to have been greater than his actions.-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 181213, Hobbes, Quarrels of Authors.

After the Restoration Charles II treated the philosopher with personal friendship, and gave him a pension. But the publication of the "Behemoth," an historic dialogue in which Hobbes represented the occurrences of the last ten years from his own point of view, was forbidden by the King. For Hobbes stood in open antagonism to the religious ideas as they had taken form after the Restoration.

As

Into

The

formerly the Presybterian Parliament under Cromwell, so now also the Anglican Parliament threatened him with religious censure. From the two universities, which he had wished fundamentally to reform, he met with bitter hostility. the Royal Society, of which he approved, he still could not gain admittance; amongst its members also his paradoxes and violence had made him enemies. King once remarked, Hobbes' hand is against every man, and every man's hand against him. Hobbes found a refuge in the family of Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire, to which he had for many years been attached. His books are for the most part dedicated to one or other of its members; he accompanied them to their country houses, for instance to Chatsworth; there in the morning he took long walks over the neighbouring hills, in the afternoon he buried himself in his studies; he was supplied with all that he wanted, tobacco and lights, and then left alone. Hobbes attained the greatest age that nature grants to man; still every year he published something. But even in the Cavendish family he was looked upon as an eccentric character whose opinions no one shared. RANKE, LEOPOLD VON, 1875, A History of England, vol. III, p. 575.

The infinite complexity of human life is stretched on the Procrustean bed of simplicity, and truth is thereby sacrificed to system. Beginning from inadequate premmises, unable or unwilling to credit human nature with social as well as with self-regarding instincts, he is forced by the very self-consistency of his logical intellect into conclusions that prove to be irreconcilable with the facts of a more universal experience. In these respects Hobbes resembles Bentham, as in his cynical pessimism he resembles La Rochefoucauld. His genius and tone of feeling have been compared with Swift, but there appears to us to be more point in the contrast than in the comparison, for Swift's temperament was passionate, and his blood red-hot, while Hobbes is always phlegmatic and cold. The one despises, the other hates. Hobbes' adversaries are cut asunder as with a steel edge, Swift's are burnt up as with a consuming fire. Nowhere in the former's life do we come across a Stella or a Vanessa, nor, even if all Hobbes' private papers had come

down to us, should we have been likely to discover such an entry as this of Swift's: "Only a woman's hair." It would be difficult to quote any trait from his biographies more characteristic of him than his selection of his own monumental inscription: "This is the true philosopher's stone."-HOARE, H. W., 1884, Thomas Hobbes, Fortnightly Review, vol. 42, p. 236.

LEVIATHAN

1751

To my booksellers for "Hobb's Leviathan," which is now mightily called for; and what was heretofore sold for 8s., I now give 24s. at the second hand, and is sold for 30s., it being a book the bishops will not let be printed again. PEPYS, SAMUEL, 1668, Diary, Sept. 3rd.

The manner of writing which booke (he told me) was thus. He walked much and contemplated, and he had in the head of his staffe a pen and inke-horne, carried alwayes a note-booke in his pocket, and as soon as a thought darted, he presently entred it into his booke, or otherwise he might perhaps have lost it. He had drawne the designe of the booke into chapters, etc., so he knew whereabout it would come in.-AUBREY, JOHN, 166996, Brief Lives, ed. Clark, vol. 1, p. 334.

Few books have occasioned more or fiercer controversy than this production of the philosopher of Malmsbury. It is an able, learned, but most paradoxical and irreligious performance. Its principles would justify all social disorder and all impiety. But the scales of the Leviathan are very hard to penetrate, and have injured most of the weapons which have been tried upon it. Lord Clarendon “surveyed" it, and Bishop Bramhall endeavoured to "catch" it; but the monster still lived, exercising the ingenuity and courage of many a successive combatant. The most formidable of his antagonists were-Cumberland, in his work "De Legibus Naturæ," and Cudworth, in the "Intellectual System."-ORME, WILLIAM, 1830, The Life and Times of Richard Baxter, p. 704., note.

One corner of his library was filled with a strange company of antiquated books of orthodox type; this he called "the condemned cell." When looking at the "strange bedfellows" that slept on the shelves, the writer asked Huxley what

author had most influenced a style whose clearness and vigour, nevertheless, seems unborrowed; and he at once named the masculine and pellucid "Leviathan" of Hobbes. CLODD, EDWARD, 1897, Pioneers of Evolution. p. 241.

POETRY

Hobbes could construe a Greek author; but his skill in words must have been all derived from the dictionary: for he seems not to have known, that any one articulate sound could be more agreeable, or any one phrase more dignified, than any other. In his Iliad and Odyssey, even when he hits the author's sense (which is not always the case), he proves, by his choice of words, that of harmony, elegance, or energy of style, he had no manner of conception. And hence that work, though called a Translation of Homer, does not even deserve the name of poem; because it is in every respect unpleasing, being nothing more than a fictitious narrative delivered in mean prose, with the additional meanness of harsh rhyme and untuneable measure. -- BEATTIE, JAMES, 1776-9, Essays on Poetry and Music, p. 239.

Hobbes's clearness and aptness of expression, the effect of which is like that of reading a book with a good light, never forsake him not even in that most singular performance, his version of Homer, where there is scarcely a trace of ability of any other kind. There are said to be only two lines in that work in which he is positively poetical.

For the

most part, indeed, Hobbes's Iliad and Odyssey are no better than travesties of Homer's, the more ludicrous as being undesigned and unconscious. Never was there a more signal revenge than that which Hobbes afforded to imagination and poetry over his own unbelieving and scoffing philosophism by the publication of this work. It was almost as if the man born blind, who had all his lifetime been attempting to prove that the sense which he himself wanted was no sense at all, and that that thing, color, which it professed peculiarly to discern, was a mere delusion, should have himself at last taken the painter's brush and pallet in hand, and attempted, in confirmation of his theory, to produce a picture by the mere senses of touch, taste, smell, and

hearing. CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol II, pp. 123, 124.

His verse is mere curiosity, though a considerable curiosity. The chief of it (the translation of Homer written in the quartrain, which his friend Davenant's "Gondibert" had made popular) is completely lacking in poetical quality, of which, perhaps, no man ever had less than Hobbes; and it is written on a bad model. But it has so much of the nervous bull-dog strength which, in literature if not in life, was Hobbes's main characteristic, that it is sometimes both a truer and a better representative of the original than some very mellifluous and elegant renderings. -SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1887, History of Elizabethan Literature, p. 350.

GENERAL

He thought interest and fear were the chief principles of society; and he put all morality in the following that which was our own private will or advantage. He thought religion had no other foundation than the laws of the land. And he put all the law in the will of the prince, or of the people: for he writ his book at first. in favour of absolute monarchy, but turned it afterwards to gratify the republican party. These were his true principles, though he had disguised them for deceiving unwary readers. And this set of notions came to spread much. The novelty and boldness of them set many on reading them. The impiety of them was acceptable to men of corrupt minds, which were but too much prepared to receive them by the extravagances of the late times. BURNET, GILBERT, 1715-34, History of My Own Times, vol. I

No English author in that age was more celebrated both abroad and at home than Hobbes; in our time he is much neglected a lively instance how precarious all reputations founded on reasoning and philosophy! . . . Hobbes's politics are fitted only to promote tyranny, and his ethics to encourage licentiousness. Though an enemy to religion he partakes nothing of the spirit of scepticism; but is as positive and dogmatical as if human reason, and his reason in particular, could attain a thorough conviction in these subjects. Clearness and propriety of style

are the chief excellencies of Hobbes's writings.-HUME, DAVID, 1762, The History of England, The Commonwealth

His style is incomparably better than that of any other writer in the reign of Charles I. and was, for its uncommon strength and purity, scarcely equalled in the succeeding reign. He has, in translation, done Thucydides as much justice as he has done injury to Homer: but he looked upon himself as born for much greater things than treading in the footsteps of his predecessors. He was for striking out new paths in science, government, and religion; and for removing the landmarks of former ages. His ethics have a strong tendency to corrupt our morals, and his politics to destroy that liberty which is the birthright of every human creature. He is commonly represented as a sceptic in religion, and a dogmatist in philosophy; but he was a dogmatist in both. The main principles of his "Leviathan" are as little founded in moral or evangelical truth, as the rules he laid down for squaring the circle are in mathematical demonstration. His book on human nature is esteemed the best of his works. GRANGER, JAMES, 1769-1824, Biographical History of England, vol. v, p. 290.

His success was not great, and the little which he had was principally among foreigners. Of the number of his impartial judges, was the Dutchman Lambert Velthuysen and of his adversaries, Richard Cumberland and Robert Scharrock.-TENNEMANN, WILHELM GOTTLIEB, 1812, A Manual of the History of Philosophy, tr. Johnson, ed. Morell, p. 299.

The genius of Hobbes was of the first order; his works abound with the most impressive truths, in all the simplicity of thought and language, yet he never elevates nor delights. Too faithful an observer of the miserable human nature before him, he submits to expedients; he acts on the defensive; and because he is in terror, he would consider security to be the happiness of man.-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1812-13, Hobbes, Quarrels of Authors.

Philosophy, on the whole, gradually deteriorated during the latter half of the seventeenth century. The example of Hobbes testifies to the facility of transition from Bacon's new method of philosophising-without reflecting any blame on